


Training

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Anxious parents, Backstory, Chirrut is mildly sensitive and has the power of seeing the future but only in unclear terms, Force-Sensitive Chirrut Îmwe, Gen, can be read as canon-compliant or not as you please, foresight, invented Force powers, invented causes of blindness, open-ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 11:37:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19393351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: A young Chirrut overhears his parents discussing his future.





	Training

**Author's Note:**

> For Week four of Celebrate Rogue One 2019; themes, Chirrut and training.  
> Force-sensitive Chirrut is a favourite headcanon of mine.

“I’m telling you,” Ma’s voice hissed “he’s got it. I saw him, clear as day, there were leaves picking themselves up off the ground and making a circle in the air, they were flying round him like birds. I know it was only leaves and nothing big but - he’s one of _them_ , Zamdo, he’s got the Force.” A pause, and she went on; her voice was hurried, and anxious, and beneath it, angry. “I don’t want to send my boy away!”

 _My boy_ meant him. 

Chirrut wasn’t eavesdropping, his sharp hearing was hardly something he could be blamed for after all, but once he’d heard himself being discussed it was difficult to _not_ hear anything more.

“They’re too busy these days to come here.” His father’s voice. Calm, clear; not nearly so anxious as Ma. “All these wars going on, Mandalore and the Force only knows how many other places. Even if they still bothered searching every year like they used to, they wouldn’t want our Chirrut, you know that. Not with his eyes going.”

“But what if they do?”

“They _won’t_.” Ba sounded quite emphatic now, that was the tone he used to indicate the end of the discussion when Chirrut asked too many questions about anything. He’d switched up to that tone faster than he needed to. Which meant he was more concerned than he wanted her to think, and he could hide the worry but not the stress it gave him.

Ma didn’t pick up on the signal, or didn’t want to. “You don’t know everything, Zamdo Îmwe. What if the Jedi do come again, and they take him for their training? Off to Coruscant where we’d never see him again?” 

Now Chirrut had to admit he really was eavesdropping. Because that was actually rather exciting. Might the Jedi really want him? 

He leaned close in against the slats of the screen door, pretending to count his rosary beads again.

“He’s past his twelfth life-day,” Ba said. “Did you ever know them to take a child older than five? No, nor I. And he has blue-eye. Even an off-worlder will spot it, you can see the colour-change clearly now. He’s far too old for them and he’ll lose what sight he has long before any training is even halfway-done. Shan-di, I promise you, you’re tearing a rip in your own heart for no reason at all. They won’t take our boy away.”

“Well, I still think we should send him to the Temple, just the same. No-one would dare take a sworn novice, Force or no. We’d still see him every day and he’d be safe there. Don’t give me that look! He’d be happy as a monk, you know how much he loves to meditate and tell his beads. He might even be a Temple Guardian one day. A Guardian of the Whills, in our family! Bring credit on your name. And he’d be _safe_.”

 _No_ , Chirrut thought, with a hard clarity he had got used-to many years past, something that came from the inside and was neither vision nor voice, but potent for all that. _No, I won’t be safe. But I’ll be where I’m meant to be_.

He wasn’t surprised to hear Ba agree.

And just like that, it was all decided. He felt the future settle, like mist coalescing and setting, from gas into clear stone, bright as crystal. His blurry sight saw it, and he heard and felt it as the echoes of the Force vibrated against his skin. Yes, he would go to the Temple, and his life would be there. His life, his faith and his love. But not all his life. Not everything till the end; because there was something more. 

Perhaps a person with better eyesight wouldn’t even have seen it, but Chirrut was already painfully used to peering at shadows and piecing out what they must be. Far away, far ahead, there was a space where the crystal of time grew dark and unclear and the will of the Force wasn’t a single smooth weave but a great swirl of threads, knotted and tangled, binding and unbinding from one another. He could see it. 

The future was hard, and fearful, but it wasn’t yet fixed. The good and the ill of it could still be shaped, and changed, by those who were willing to hope.

A long way away yet, though. For now, he was going to be a monk, and forget about his games with floating leaves. He’d never managed to do much more than that and he wasn’t sure he ever would; so he probably wasn’t meant to be a Jedi anyway. And at the Temple he would be where he was meant to be, when both the darkness and the hope came to Jedha.


End file.
